Talk:Church of Satan/Archive 2

RfC about Church of Satan membership figures
I would like other editors to comment on the following topics:
 * 1) Should equal weight given to membership estimates by
 * private detective Larry Kahaner, author of Cults That Kill (1988) - 20,000
 * Arthur Lyons, author of The Second Coming: Satanism in America (1970) - 7,000
 * sociologist Massimo Introvigne (1997) - 1,000
 * religious studies scholar J. Gordon Melton (2014) - "hundreds"
 * 2) Is it possible to add the membership estimates to the intro, even if the organization itself does not publish its membership figures?
 * 3) Is a 1973 US military chaplain's manual on the Church of Satan a reliable source for Wikipedia?
 * 4) Editor Seanbonner added the following to the article: "as memberships are for a lifetime membership numbers would grow year after year." He didn't give a source for this and claims one is not needed, as it is, in the editor's opinion, "simple addition". I believe this is a non sequitur statement. What do other editors think?
 * Mvaldemar (talk) 11:57, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * 1) Mvaldemar who was recently banned for edit warring on this page is asking misleading questions here. The people mentioned are not cited sources, Mvaldemar added a citation to an article by Maxwell Davies who is the cited source, in the article Davies cites the 4 different people as evidence that membership estimates are all over the place. Mvaldemar continues to try and add references to the lowest estimate as if that is a documented fact. Additionally Kahaner, Lyons & Massimo are talking about "members" and Melton is talking about "active members", which is a position people must apply for, not a comment on their involvement ( http://www.churchofsatan.com/active-membership.php ). Seanbonner (talk) 12:08, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Is Melton talking about active members in the general sense, or about the specific "active members" defined by the CoS? Mvaldemar (talk) 12:28, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * You've cited him as a reliable source of information about this organization and it's membership so you'd have to assume he was familiar with the organizations membership levels, otherwise if he didn't know the membership levels then comments on how many members there were would be suspect. Seanbonner (talk) 13:22, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * 2) Please see discussion and edits on this, which has become a disputed issue that keeps growing so I moved it to the section about this specifically. Seanbonner (talk) 12:08, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * 3) The cited information was added to the handbook in 1973, it persisted in the editions published for decades after that. The army no longer publishes a chaplin's handbook. Seanbonner (talk) 12:08, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * A later edition of the handbook (edited by J. Gordon Melton) simply states the CoS doesn't publish membership data: http://www.kerkenkrijgsmacht.nl/images/bestanden/publicaties/us-religious-requirements.pdf Mvaldemar (talk) 13:39, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Either the source is valid or it isn't. I question your motives when your acceptance of the validity of a source seems to hing on your agreement with the detail in question, and you argue a source is valid for one detail but not another. Melton's bias has already been discussed, that he would edit text to remove details that conflict with his other statements shouldn't be surprising, nor does it invalidate the earlier editions. Seanbonner (talk) 13:59, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia prefers newer sources. Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources#Age_matters. Mvaldemar (talk) 14:17, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * The new edition does not offer a correction or conflicting information, it simply shortened the allotted text. The earlier edition is the most recent statement from the Army on this matter, it wasn't invalidated. Seanbonner (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Do you have any sources for these claims? Maybe the 1973 edition was inaccurate, and the false data was removed from the 2000 edition. Mvaldemar (talk) 14:27, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Seriously? Do I have sources for my claim? Yes I do in fact, the 1973 and the 2000 edition of the manual. Compare them. There is no correction, there is no contradiction. It's simply less text in the later edition. Your continued arguing with every word I type is getting obnoxious. Seanbonner (talk) 14:37, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * 4) Please see full discussion on this, it was a much larger statement that Mvaldemar has continued to chip away at. I think the longer version makes more sense myself. Seanbonner (talk) 12:08, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Re: #2, article intros should be reasonably short, and not crammed with so many extra details covered in other sections. This whole discussion just goes to show that there is no definitive public answer about membership numbers, and thus no simple summary of it other than something like, "The Church of Satan does not disclose its membership numbers". So I don't see the point in trying to add stuff like "but this book claims this, while this other person claims this" in the intro, especially given that it's a topic you're debating and editing over. WillieBlues (talk) 17:44, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Re: #4, this could be better worded, and I admittedly haven't seen the longer version, but I don't see how this is a nonsequitur. We're talking about an organization that's only about 50 years old, keeps getting new people every year that enroll in membership, and these memberships are all lifetime memberships. Unless the organization gets a notice of a member's resignation or death, or kicks the member out of the organization, then I'd think it would follow that the organization presumes the given person is still a member. I recall reading a more detailed statement, I think in Barton's "Church of Satan" book, in response to some people's claim that membership numbers were smaller than they had been. Perhaps that line should be quoted directly and sourced for full context. WillieBlues (talk) 18:34, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

More context from those works would be useful (about them, but also the context in which each mentions the membership), as it doesn't seem like I can access them, mostly. It's striking that they're all from more than 10 years apart. It does murky the waters that distinction between "active" and "membership" if membership is for life.

Regardless, why can't we just say something like "The Church of Satan declines to release membership numbers. Estimates have ranged from 'hundreds' in 2014 to 20,000 in 1988."? &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 14:56, 20 November 2017 (UTC)


 * The issue is that this is a 51 year old organization that has never published membership numbers, so every count is effectively guesswork. The sources sited by Davies are all over the place, from reviews of attendees at an event to passing mentions in other articles. His article is trying to make the point that all membership numbers are speculation and they vary widely, which is why I took issue with the inclusion of the lowest figure as if that was definitive, as that's not what the article says. Additionally, the suggestion of "x in this year, y in this year" doesn't work because none of these estimates make the claim of a certain number at a certain date, the dates mentioned are just when the articles or books were published, the writings however all make generalized statements which could refer to any period of time. And the fact that memberships are for a lifetime creates a conflict if we make a statement that they are one number at one date and then less at a later date without justifying why - which again speaks to the obtuse nature of this detail in general. The only reasonable thing to say is that lots of people have made lots of guesses but the organization hasn't ever published an official number. Seanbonner (talk) 23:36, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that I mostly see your point. Again, I don't have the context for the estimates in books that aren't available via Google Books. As it does seem like a relevant detail, it does seem worth including something. Presumably these were published at reputable presses with editorial oversight that would check for things like completely arbitrary figures (i.e. if it's a reliable source, in most cases it's probably fair to call it an "estimate" rather than dismiss it as "guesswork"). Then, if we have multiple estimates from reliable sources, it seems fair to either give a range or to say something like "estimates have ranged from the hundreds to the tens of thousands". Of course, if there's reason to dismiss either the high or the low outlier they're worth discussing independently. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 00:26, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately that's not a safe assumption, the sources that Davies references run the gamut on reliability. As I mentioned before the lowest one, the estimate of 300, which Mvaldemar tried several times to add in the article as definitive, comes from this SF Weekly review of an event ( https://archives.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/has-the-church-of-satan-gone-to-hell/Content?oid=2135375 ) written by Boulware in 1998 which states that "300 sweaty kids" were in attendance, so Davies then using Boulware 1998 as a citation of the CoS having 300 members is incorrect and shouldn't even be considered. The other sources are not published books, but rather passing references in other articles many of which are locked away by academic journals. So, I tend to agree with you that simply stating that estimates have ranged from X to X" is a better position than citing every individual estimate is the way to go. I'm referring to the estimates as guesswork as none of the sources explain how they came up with those numbers and since CoS members don't discuss them (with the exception of the Zeena LaVey from Geraldo which I added to the article which says "hundreds of thousands, I don't know, but certainly thousands, easily") the authors at some point all had to make a number up from nothing. Seanbonner (talk) 01:34, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

RE#1 Should equal weight given to membership estimates…

The Church of Satan has a policy against releasing membership numbers. Members are discouraged from interacting with academicians and memberships last a lifetime. People looking to discredit the Church will report low numbers, even if they need to manipulate or misquote data to do it. Resolution is impossible because all estimates are pure conjecture, and their value weighed with the estimators’ agendas in mind.

RE#2 Is it possible to add the membership estimates to the intro

I don’t see why it’s top-of-the-pyramid data, given that the Church of Satan doesn’t report membership. Maybe say, “The Church of Satan does not release membership numbers.”

RE#3 Is a 1973 US military chaplain's manual on the Church of Satan a reliable source

Why wouldn’t it be? And since the citation includes the date, I don’t see how that could be viewed as misleading. And isn’t what is and is not a reliable source already defined by Wikipedia?

RE#4 Editor Seanbonner added the following to the article: "as memberships are for a lifetime membership numbers would grow year after year."

The “memberships are for a lifetime” is a fact. “Membership numbers would grow” is an opinion. It’s a logical conclusion but I suppose someone might take issue. Brevity is the soul of wit. (talk) 02:20, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

RfC comment
 * 1) No, as some of those listed are not of established reliability.
 * John Carter I'm not sure if you saw the comment above and just wanted to clarify your position here - The people listed are not individual citations, there is one article in a peer reviewed academic book about how membership numbers are hard to estimate, that author who is the cited source in this wikipedia article lists several different sources for various membership claims within his article. Mvaldemar has tried to list only the lowest one as definitive, which is not what the cited source states. My position is that if that book is being cited as the source, and it is a valid source, then the wikipedia article should accurately convey what is being stated in the book by mentioning the various estimates - are you saying that this wikipedia article should not accurately convey what the cited source says and instead only use one piece of information from it out of context? Seanbonner (talk) 23:36, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * You seem to once again be holding to a matter I have raised in my last comment below, indicating that it is basically impossible for any person, once recognized as Active, to later become for whatever reason inactive. That strikes me as a rather big assumption, and if you are going to continue to assert it I think we would need a source specifically indicating exactly why it would be impossible for individuals, once recognized as Active, to ever become inactive. John Carter (talk) 17:26, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
 * John Carter I think there are a few different issues here that are being conflated, so I'm going to try and separate them out so we can discuss them individually. This question is specifically asking if 4 different researchers estimates should be given equal weight, my point here is that this is a misleading question as the 4 different researchers estimates are not each being individually cited in the article. What is being cited is an essay in a peer reviewed academic text by Maxwell Davies which says that "it's impossible to know how many members the CoS has because they don't disclose membership numbers, however estimates by various different researchers over the years have put the number between X and 100X." Mvaldemar added this citation with definitive text stating "a researcher determined membership was X" which is not supported by the source, and an edit war ensued. The purpose of this article is not to meta critique Maxwell Davies essay, but rather to represent what it states accurately. The question of "equal weight" is a red herring, because Davies already went to print in 2009 with his essay giving the estimates equal weight. So, at this point, if we are using the Davies essay as a citation - and there's no reason we shouldn't be as it hits all requirements for a valid source - then we should accurately represent what Davies is saying which is that it's impossible to know how many members the CoS has because they don't disclose membership numbers, however estimates by various different researchers over the years have put the number between X and 100X. Seanbonner (talk) 00:17, 5 December 2017 (UTC)


 * 2) No, as including them all would be excessive detail.
 * 3) If, as the above discussion seems to indicate, the source is being considered regarding the membership number issue, I think it is an acceptable source for saying that the church does not publish membership numbers.
 * 4) The statement in question does not seem to be clearly reliably sourced, and it doesn't seem to address possible excommunications, if there are such, or the possibility of deaths of members, so the conclusion isn't as clear cut as some seem to think.

The fundamental issue I see in a quick review here is the phrase "active member" and related terms. If it is a technical term with a specific meaning in this church, then the specific phrase should probably only be used in Accord with the internal definition. However, there are clearly other phrasing options which exist and do not necessarily have the same problem, like, for instance, members currently regularly active in church activities or something along those lines. John Carter (talk) 20:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * "Active member" is a technical term and a membership level within the church, any researcher who is writing about the church would know this as it's basic knowledge and listed plainly on their website. To avoid confusion here I'll use small a for the action and big A for the membership level. There are no "active" members who are not "Active" members, as being active requires being Active. If that makes sense. In order to be allowed to be active within the church, a member must apply and be approved for Active membership. So, when discussing membership numbers, there would be a large pool of members and a much smaller subset of those that would be classified as Active members (which isn't a comment about how active that member is, simply the membership level they have attained.) Seanbonner (talk) 23:44, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Your statement above seems to not take into account the possibility that once individuals get recognized as being at the Active level that they might subsequently become inactive for some reason, possibly including some sort of conversion or falling away from the church and the like. A similar example might be Catholic confirmation. A person does have to be active at the time and immediately prior to the time of confirmation, but the regularly reported large number of inactive Catholics makes it rather clear that truly active involvement in the church can and regularly does change thereafter. John Carter (talk) 17:26, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Again I think the confusion here is mixing up someone who "is active within the church" and an "Active Member." With respect I think your analogy to Catholic confirmation is incorrect, as confirmation is a process that children go through at the urging of their parents often as part of parochial school curriculum and as those children grow up some become less active in church communities, this is starkly different from membership in the CoS who does not even accept members that are not legally adults, and to attain the level of "Active" member requires a detailed application and assessment, which isn't guaranteed to be approved. A more accurate analogy would be an educational degree, indeed the CoS itself refers to membership levels as degrees with the point being if you go through the effort to get a Bachelor's degree in Psychology you don't lose it because you shift your interest to Fine Art later on. Certainly you could rip up your degree and sent it back to the university if you felt the need to do that, but that's likely a very extreme situation. Even upon death you don't lose the degree - and as the CoS makes it very clear on publications that their membership levels are degrees, awards as recognition for demonstrated understanding of Satanic principals, the obsession here about people becoming less active isn't comparable. The only two things we know for sure, as confirmed by the CoS itself are 1. Memberships are for life and 2. New members join all the time. Everything else is speculation and assumption. The original text stated just that, Mvaldemar tried to make the case that membership was decreasing which would require that people were "ripping up their degrees and sending them in" at a higher rate than were joining, which is completely unsourced assumption. An active organization with new people joining on a regular basis that only offers lifetime memberships would not have decreasing membership numbers. The question of how active someone is or isn't within the organization is a distraction, as CoS itself does not solicit activities within the church, rather encouraging it's members to go out and live their own lives. This is repeated in countless places on their materials and websites, they don't see themselves as a social group in anyway so viewing them under that lens is a bit apples and oranges. Seanbonner (talk) 00:17, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, nothing in the above comment seems to me to directly address the concerns I raised, and, in fact, I see a clearly OR interpretation that all confirmations, or for that matter baptisms, are of adolescents, and an additional OR conclusion based upon same which is so far as I can see directly contadicted by multiple studies that all adult conversions are from only religions individuals were indoctrinat ed into as teens. If you wish a separate comparison, I think it is clearly historically demonstrable that several individuals who have taken oaths as Freemasons or similar groups who do not remain as members, even if they only became exposed to it or joined it as adults. I can also now see given the extreme length of some comments why many editors might think TLDR and not respond here at all. Perhaps it might be best if you limited the frequency and length of your rebuttals to perhaps reduce the amount of work anyone coming to the RfC might have to undergo. John Carter (talk) 01:02, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Again, the concerns you raised were misplaced, and I didn't say "all" I said "many." This is a talk page, not an article - OR doesn't apply as here it's called opinion which is the whole point of the talk page. The fact remains that an "oath of faith" is different than an awarded degree, and trying to apply the logic from one to the other is not valid. Seanbonner (talk) 01:08, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * What I think does matter is something you have yet to directly address. That is the issue of mortality. LeVay himself died 20 years ago. It is obvious false that the numbers will inherently have to grow based solely on continuing new members if earlier members are dying off, particularly if the number of dying is greater than the number of new members. And I have not seen that addressed at all by you. There is also another very serious and likely real concern, that of relocation. If a member moves away from a location which has a local unit to some place without such a unit, his level of true activity in the church could be open to serious question. John Carter (talk) 21:33, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Those issues haven't been addressed because they aren't relevant, the CoS doesn't have "local units" so where a member lives doesn't matter and a very quick look at their news pages shows new members doing things very actively all the time. So again we're back at the unverifiable claim that members are dying faster than they are joining. I recommend you look at their own website for a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the topic before making any further claims. Seanbonner (talk) 02:03, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Please remember here that the most important unverifiable claim being discussed here is your own. John Carter (talk) 00:28, 18 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment 1) If the assumptions is that all of these sources are reliable then use them all. Equal validity really doesn't matter much. It's Obvious that Lyons figures do not represent the 80's, Kahaner doesn't represent 90's membership, Introvigne doesn't represent the next decade, and Melton is also from a specific time. Don't use Lyons to say the membership is currently 7k. If any of the sources are not reliable, obviously you don't use them. 2) I think WillieBlues has it right. 3) It's more of a first party source. It could be used for certain statements of fact. 4) Is there a source? This is not a sky is blue issue or this is not a set of facts that should be considered common knowledge. Basically no source then remove it.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 02:49, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Notable members?
You would expect at least a short list of famous people who had been members of the Church. Valetude (talk) 16:00, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

repeated paragraph
I couldn't help but notice that except for the first sentence, everything in the "legacy" section is the same word for word as text in the header section. This should probably be fixed.--108.86.121.31 (talk) 04:04, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Inadequate footnotes
There are plenty of footnotes that refer to the likes of Lewis 2002 and Petersen 2013, but the links in these footnotes lead to nowhere and there is no list of literature referenced. --Miihkali (talk) 07:39, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Same with Asprem & Granholm 2014. &mdash; viciarg 414 07:29, 7 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I've restored the last version of the article (from 23:18, 4 February 2016!) which isn't full of these fake citations. Don't restore a more recent version unless you have fixed that damn mess (I suggest using a sandbox). I can only presume that this is an example of the "lesser magic" described in the (newer) article. Slight of hand to make the article look cited even though it only promotes certain books and does not actually list its sources. Skyerise (talk) 03:50, 17 March 2022 (UTC)


 * For convenience, if you really care about this, here's the link to the 03:13, 17 March 2022‎ version with the fake/ineptly done citations with missing list of sources so you can copy it to your sandbox and fix it before restoring it. Skyerise (talk) 04:00, 17 March 2022 (UTC)